Review: Pete Davidson Goes Deep and Dark with 'Bupkis'

The premise of Pete Davidson's new comedy, "Bupkis," is summarized in the disclaimer that ushers in each half-hour episode, warning us that the show "is inspired in part by real people and events," though liberties have been taken to create stories that exaggerate the comedy and make the inner turmoil comprehensible. In other words, "It's bupkis" – and that's the reason for the title, a word of Yiddish derivation that means "nothing."

Rather similarly to that other show about "nothing," "Bupkis" takes insignificant moments and plumbs them for maximal meaning, whether it's gross-out humor (as in the show's very first scenes, which set the series' tone and let you know that, yes, the writers and producers will absolutely go there) or the most miserably strung-out episodes of existential anxiety and despair you could imagine.

Put simply, the show alternates between sweet, silly, and surreal, with the humor falling somewhere between wryly self-deprecating and a full-blown panic attack. There's a darker edge to the series from the start, when the main character – a comedian and former "Saturday Night Live" cast member named Pete Davidson – finds out that his "Poppy," played with tough-guy élan by Joe Pesci, is terminally ill.

But the show isn't an end-of-life drama so much as a comedy about the complications of everyday life. Poppy, for all his tough love and street wisdom, is something of a joker, getting up to all sorts of disreputable nonsense with his sidekick Roy (Brad Garrett). Pete's Uncle Tommy (Bobby Canavale) is no less childish than Pete himself; he's just older and more surly, gripped by a midlife crises that refuses to fade.

Pete's mother (played by the great Edie Falco) is as tough as Poppy – "I'm your daughter; I'm the strongest woman you know," she tells Poppy at one point – and she has a charismatic resilience that allows her to withstand a lifetime of shocks, from a tragedy dating back to 9/11 to her famous son's wild misdeeds, which usually involve drugs and juvenile recklessness.

All the episodes deal with the hazards of fame in one way or another, including hordes of paparazzi, strangers willing to hand over a bag of something brown and hallucinogenic on request, and a fake news report of Pete's death. It can be hard to make this sort of premise relatable, but an early shout-out to the similarly-themed HBO series "Entourage" gives viewers an easy handle for the show: These are the nominally biographical misadventures of a TV and film star and his crew of hangers-on.

If the "Entourage" crowd were grown men in nice clothes with puerile attitudes, though, the crew depicted here represent a kind of cultural slippage: Pete's nimbus of hangers-on are not even pretending to be grownups. Outside of his family (which includes level-headed sister Casey, played by Oona Roche), the most responsible and competent people in Pete's orbit are his assistant Evan (Philip Ettinger), a perpetually confused fellow whose oddball assignments often leave him stammering, and Nikki (Chase Sui Wonders), a former lover and still a close friend of Pete's. She's not part of Pete's all-male retinue, but she's ever reliable when he needs a shoulder (or the show needs to remind us that underneath the shambles of his life, Pete is a good guy seeking genuine human connection). Of all the half-sketched relationships in this series, the one between Pete and Nikki is the most sorely neglected, and the most promising for future seasons.

The cast of characters are enough to sustain the first season's eight episodes, though you wonder how much further they could take things. More durable is the inventiveness of the show's moods and modes of presentation; while one episode might be vapid and predictable (Pete decides he ought to become a father to help anchor his life), another might be turbocharged with deliberately ridiculous action movie beats, while another feels like a short film from the heart of art house darkness. Canada, and the specter of Brad Pitt (along with some hardcore drug use) figure into the show's most surreal segment, an episode that casts a pall of unmoored anxiety – or, more precisely, spiritual dislocation – while making standard celebrity jokes about Sebastian Stan. One episode feels ripped from 1940s movie houses – a black-and-white outlier that mixes contemporary humor with the conventions of the prison movie drama.

This grab-bag of styles results in mixed success, and its central formulas of found and biological family are underused, leaving the season overall feeling like a free-floating opium dream. A cascade of celebrity guests wend through the eight episodes (everyone from Steve Buscemi, Al Gore, and Jon Stewart to Simon Rex, Ray Romano, and Machine Gun Kelly), but it's hard to say what, if anything, the show's core identity is aside from a nagging feeling of imminent collapse.

That might very well be the point, and it's handled with some skill and even, on occasion, real smarts. If the show returns, we might look forward to it crystallizing into something just as nebulous and provisional, with more consistent results.

"Bupkis" premieres on Peacock on May 4.